The EAS is comprised of a client component (i.e. the user interface), which runs on your local system, and a server component, which runs on a server system accessible over the Internet, and which processes client requests and controls access to the central repository.

The focus for the 1.2 release is on performance improvements. Evaluation Specifications in the central repository are richly annotated and thus represent complex and large documents. A typical Evaluation Specification takes up between one and two MB of disk space. As a consequence, when an Evaluation Specification is transferred from the central repository, data transfer takes its time. Of course, the bandwidth of your Internet connection is a major factor.

EAS Release 1.2 uses a different protocol, which speeds up communication between communicating components.

A new prominent feature in the new release is the Strengths/Weaknesses Analysis in the Evaluation Project Spreadsheet Editor. It provides you with computed totals for all "Part" and "Section" nodes in an evaluation project spreadsheet. The current release computes totals at the Requirement Group and at the root node levels.

A typical Evaluation Specification has 5 or 6 nesting levels. Each level represents a summarization level. For each summarization level, you can quickly and easily see how each product included in the evaluation project compares to the competition and where each product has its strengths and weaknesses.

A couple of bugs have also been fixed in the new release.

Since communication between service requestors (clients) and service providers has changed, it will be necessary to download and install the new EAS version.  Please do so at your earliest convenience as soon as EAS release 1.2 is available.